The Irony of Exotism: The Reverse Side of Japan as a Myth

Folio" publishing house produces a separate series, the magazine "Literatur und Kritik" dedicates a special edition to the topic: At the moment Japan seems to be as popular in Austrian literature as it was during the fin de siècle, for example in Peter Altenberg`s circle. The use of a rather limited number of motives is as typical for most of these new texts as a conflict in their tone. If some aspect of a foreign culture is very strange to our own viewpoint, we feel tempted both to embrace it as a myth and to burst out in ironic laughter. What exactly is the correlation between irony and the experience of a foreign culture? To mention one of those recurring motives, for instance: Puppet players in the Japanese puppet theatre "Bunraku" wear black hoods covering their faces. This means they should not be seen on stage, even though foreigners in Japan can not help but note their presence. Can a figure that is visible on stage be absent from stage at the same time? The answer seems to be "natural" for the Western spectator, yet nothing but cultural convention accounts for this "naturalness". The limits of our own cultural convention are what we experience if we encounter a foreign culture. "A representation of something that is the result of a social agreement as `natural`" is the core of what Roland Barthes defined as "myth". A long philosophical tradition has opposed "myth" and "irony". Is it possible to apply this confrontation to Barthes` definition of "myth"? That would make irony "the appearance of the social consensus in something that seemed to be `natural`": the very moment for example, in which it becomes quite obvious that the presence of a figure on a stage can depend on cultural consensus only. After his "Mythologies", Barthes wrote "Empire of Signs", a book which has been criticised for its inappropriate use of "myth". This book has since become probably the most influential semiotic interpretation of Japanese motives by a European author. These motives became labels for the "exotic" nature of Japan and integral parts of a mythical or ironic Western "discourse" on the country. In contemporary Austrian literature, parts of this discourse can be found in the works of Ingram Hartinger, Elisabeth Reichart, Peter Rosei, Gerhard Roth, Margit Schreiner, H.C. Artmann and Peter Waterhouse. This project will give a survey of Austrian literature on the topic and analyse the tensions of "other" and "self" in it. The instrument to achieve this will be a model of irony making use of Barthes` concept of myth as well as contemporary cultural theory.